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Why couldn’t I be the casual-romance girl? Why couldn’t I pick up some strange guy at a bar, flirt and kiss, and have no-strings-attached sex? Why did my brain always prevent me from behaving like a normal person?
Kissing. I would start with kissing.
So I did. I parted my lips and felt the cool, wet slide of his mouth across mine. He slipped his hands under my chin, tilting my face toward his so he could take even more of my mouth. He was gentle. He was sweet. And it felt wrong.
You know when you can tell you’re making a huge mistake—not just buying ugly shoes because they’re on sale or choosing the wrong Christmas gift for your mother but “the world is off its axis, spinning out of control into the abyss of space” wrong? I was making a huge mistake. Even though it was possible Gabriel was out, enjoying a “purely carnal” relationship with a woman who enjoyed high-quality stationery, at that very moment, it felt wrong for me to be kissing someone else. It felt like a betrayal.
I pulled back from him and sighed. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. You’re really nice. And that was a really great kiss. I don’t want to lead you on or send out mixed signals, which is, ironically, exactly what I’m doing right now. But I just got out of a weird relationship, and I’m not ready to do this yet.”
“I can be your rebound guy,” he offered affably. “It won’t hurt my feelings, honest.”
I stared at him for a beat, my hormones waging war against my more rational parts. Stupid rational parts! I groaned. “That’s really tempting, trust me. But I’m more of a wallowing-in-self-pity/angry-outburst type than a rebounder.”>“I know I’m your first female friend, so it’s taken some adjustments for you. But we’re not going to have in-depth mammary discussions. Also, I’m not changing in front of you,” I told him. Dick rolled his eyes and turned his back.
When I remained clothed, he sighed his martyr’s sigh and slunk outside my bedroom door, calling in, “Whatever you girls did to banish the Ghost of Jackasses Past obviously didn’t work, because you’re all still sulky. So, you’re going to take this like a man. No ice cream. No fruity drinks. No movies where whiny women ‘find their power.’ You’re not a girl, Jane.”
“I think my God-given gift of cleavage proves otherwise,” I muttered as I pulled the tank top over my head.
Dick snickered. “You know what I mean. You’re not like other girls. If you were, you’d be sitting in a dark room somewhere, making a scrapbook of painful memories and reading Women Are from Mars, Men Are from Uranus or something. You’re sort of a guy at heart, Jane. And you know what guys do when we’re suffering?”
I poked my head out of my room and informed him, “If this involves going to the Booby Hatch and watching my cousin Junie do her tribute to famous interns, I’ll pass.”
Dick ignored me. “There are three things guys do when we’re suffering. We drink, and we don’t talk about our feelings.”
“Oddly enough, I find that extremely appealing. What’s the third thing?”
Dick handed me my purse and ushered me out the door. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Why do I see cow tipping in my immediate future?”
When I found myself sitting in the parking lot of the Cellar, staring at the sputtering neon sign, I asked Dick if he’d lost his ever-loving mind.
“It’s the Cellar, you loved the Cellar,” Dick said, jiggling my shoulder. “That one time. Come on, Norm asks about you all the time.”
“As in ‘Whatever happened to that girl who got her ass handed to her in my parking lot and was suspected of setting Walter on fire?’” I snorted.
Dick dragged me out of the car. “No, as in ‘Whatever happened to that girl who kept me from being a Norm-shaped smear across the parking lot?’”
The Cellar was packed compared with the single night I’d spent there the previous year. Norm, the ironically named cuddly bartender, was busy, his work complicated by the house band blaring painfully earnest Elton John covers. But there were humans and vampires on the dance floor, and everybody sitting at the bar seemed companionably drunk.
“Norm!” Dick crowed over the din.
Norm shook his broad, balding head and chuckled. “That never gets old.”
“Place is busy tonight,” Dick observed.
Norm opened his mouth to answer but started when he saw my face. “Jane! I almost didn’t recognize you! Haven’t seen you around here since, well, the night Walter died.”
I smiled and hoped none of Walter’s friends overheard this conversation. Technically, Missy did the actual killing, but that report wasn’t as widely circulated in the vampire community as the one accusing me of setting Walter on fire. … Oh, wait, Walter didn’t have any friends.
“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Norm said, grasping my hands in his own warm, thick paws. “Most vamps, especially newborns, probably would have wanted to stay out of that mess and let me fend for myself. You helped me, and I appreciate it. You don’t pay for drinks here, ever, got it?”
If I could have blushed, I would have. Instead, I just gave him a crooked smile and said, “Thanks.”
“Hey, I was there, too,” Dick objected.
“You were in the can,” Norm said with considerably less warmth. “And I’ve seen you drink. You’d run me out of business. What can I do for you?”
Dick grinned liked a winsome, irresistible toddler. “A bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, please, Norm.”
